Conjuring Emotion

This week’s Random Writers topic is “What is your favorite website and why?” I remember thinking that was the dumbest topic ever when it was first thrown out in our list of possible topics. Well, once again, I was so totally, freaking, completely wrong in my first thought. This is a great topic, and fellow Random Writer Jeff Smith proved that on Tuesday with his post. Then, Lindsey followed up on Wednesday with another really amazing favorite website that I can’t wait to check out.

As Gil touched on in his post on Monday, there are essentials like Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook that can’t be overlooked when creating a list of favorite websites. However, I guess that it could be argued that just because these are our most visited websites, they may not necessarily be our most beloved. After all, my place of employment is my most visited physical site but it is certainly NOT my favorite place to be.

Another website I must mention is Google Reader. This is my lifeline to all things blog. Be it posts about blogging or simply posts by bloggers, I can’t live without this compilation of my favorite websites. I have various lists set up in Google Reader that I find very useful in organizing the chaos. Within these lists are my favorite blogs and other RSS feeds from websites I have deemed important. I really want to elaborate on these lists and what makes up these all important feeds of information, but I’m afraid I would find myself 1500 words into a blog post about blog posts and that’s not what THIS blog post is about.

Okay, where was I? Oh, I remember. I was about to reveal my numero uno-favoritest-can’t-possibly-live-without-or-I-would-totally-stop-breathing website.

My favorite website is and always will be the one my husband is writing for, be it his own blog or some other site like Random Writers.

Stop rolling your eyes and give me a moment to explain.

I would like to set the stage with this quote:

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader–not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” E.L. Doctorow

When I first met Gil, he was very much in love with someone else. She wasn’t able to fully commit to a relationship with him so while he waited for her he started blogging as a therapeutic release to help him deal with his internal anguish, frustration, disappointment, and even sometimes jubilation. After a date or two, he introduced me to his then six-month old blog. I was immediately hooked. The first thing I did every morning was check to see if he had blogged the night before. Some days, those blogs were really hard to read as he regularly wrote about the pain of loving someone who would could not reciprocate that love. It became impossible to ignore his writing, even if it oftentimes sometimes was too painful to bear.

His blog posts became more about his words and emotions than about my personal reaction as I found myself falling in love with him. I found a way to disconnect my personal feelings from his stories in order to find the beauty that existed in them. He has this gift of storytelling that generates more emotional response than the reader is sometimes prepared for. He has a talent of almost forcing the reader to experience overwhelming empathy for what he, the writer, was feeling as he wrote those words. If I hurt for my own self when reading those blogs, it was nothing compared to the almost unbearable agony I often felt for him. It was just so easy to forget that I had a vested interest in this other woman dropping off the face of the planet. Because of the feelings he conjured with his words, I found myself praying that she would come around and devote herself to him, with all her heart. If that doesn’t prove the power in his words, I don’t know what could.

Gil has a talent of putting letters together to create the perfect words in the perfect order to invoke the perfect emotion. I realize he is my husband and I’m supposed to say these things, but I don’t feel I’m alone in my love of his writing. If I’m completely honest with myself, I fell in love with Gil’s words long before I fell in love with his being. I guess when you realize how much he writes from his heart, that makes perfect sense.

I get no greater joy than when I see him sitting in front of his laptop with a blank word document open before him. I become giddy with anticipation in knowing that in a few minutes, a new work of art will be available for me to devour.

I hope I’ve piqued your interest and that you will visit his blog. He has been spending some time moving his old blog posts to his new blog home on WordPress. I invite you to visit often as he brings the old posts back to life. I know I’m looking forward to reading them again.